Hair transplantation procedures are well-known, and typically involve harvesting donor hair grafts from the “donor areas,” for example, side and back fringe areas of the patient's scalp, and implanting them in a bald area (“recipient area”). Historically, the harvested hair grafts were relatively large (3-5 mm), although more recently the donor grafts may be single “follicular units” (FUs) which are naturally occurring aggregates of 1-3 (and much less commonly, 4-5) closely spaced hair follicles that are distributed randomly over the surface of the scalp. Implanting generally involves instruments used by surgeons that are either designed to place hair grafts into pre-made wounds, or those that make wounds and implant hair grafts into the freshly made wounds.
One device for implanting FUs is seen in U.S. Pat. No. 5,951,572, which utilizes a plunger for urging an FU from within a cartridge into a body surface.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,585,746 discloses a hair transplantation system utilizing a robotic system, including a robotic arm and a hair follicle end effector associated with the robotic arm that could be used to harvest follicular units from the donor area and/or implant a hair follicle into the recipient area.